The invention relates to a bill validator status detector for detecting the status of a bill validator in a device such as a gaming device. Gaming devices, such as slot machines, often include a bill validator allowing a customer to use either coins or bills to wager. Bill validators can experience failures which must be corrected by service personnel. When the bill validator is inoperative, customers cannot use bills to play the gaming device which results in customer frustration and reduced revenue. Accordingly, it is desirable to decrease the number of non-working bill validators and decrease the amount of bill validator down time.